In one of the largest settlements in the Catholic church’s sweeping sex abuse scandal, an order of priests agreed Friday to pay $166.1 million to hundreds of Native Americans and Alaska Natives who were abused at the order’s schools around the Pacific Northwest.

The Jesuit order, called the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus, has been accused of using its schools in remote villages and on reservations as dumping grounds for problem priests. …

The settlement between the more than 450 victims and the province also calls for a written apology to the victims and disclosure of documents to them, including their medical records. …

The settlement is believed to be the Catholic Church’s third-largest in the sex abuse cases, behind the Los Angeles Diocese, which agreed to pay $660 million to 508 victims, and the San Diego Diocese, which agreed to pay $198 million to 144 victims, according to the website BishopAccountability.org.

I blogged late last year about a cache of documents that had been released as a result of the San Diego case. Those documents reveal that the Church made calculated decisions intended to keep abusive priests in the Church — and able to continue abusing children elsewhere. But worse, it also revealed that California officials colluded with them to allow this to happen.

It’s a fucking disgrace … but to date the R.C. Church has refused to handle it head-on. The Church still prefers to evade accountability. Instead, they remain convinced this scandal is a vile diabolical attack on God’s holy, perfect Church; the real victims here are not the abused children, but rather, the priests who’ve abused them. Those poor priests, you see, were forced by the Devil to abuse children in their care. The Devil worked through the children, you see … which implies the children were actually the perpetrators of these crimes, not the abusive priests.

Yes, folks, the Vatican has a horribly deviant worldview, a result of which is that it never concedes error since it never considers itself capable of doing wrong. Any wrongdoing can only be coerced out of it, by outside forces, such as the Devil, “masonic secularists,” “great foreign newspapers,” etc.

A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland’s Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police – a disclosure that victims groups described as “the smoking gun” needed to show that the Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of coverup.

The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican’s rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland’s first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

What makes this a “smoking gun” is that it shows the Vatican to have lied about the scandal:

The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that the church in Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church’s right to handle all child-abuse allegations, and determine punishments, in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.

The letter also shows the Vatican’s primary concern was to ensure that canon law — i.e. the Church’s own internal legal system — handled these cases and that secular courts would never see them. Once again we see that the Church views itself as being above the law of the countries in which it operates, and assumes itself answerable to no one and nothing else.

For most of the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church downplayed the practice of exorcism. As an institution, it tended to shy away from the idea that people’s problems — particularly mental or neurological illnesses — were caused by demonic possession, and instead left it up to the practice of medicine. This was a positive development, and lent credence to the idea that these illnesses are not of metaphysical origin, but physiological in nature.

Still other responses have been less rhetorical and more active, and even more indirect. The latest is a reversal of the Church’s former de-emphasis on exorcism, and a renewed embrace of that medieval practice, as reported by the UPI (WebCite cached article):

More than 100 Roman Catholic priests and bishops have gathered in Baltimore for a conference on exorcism.

The two-day conference, which is not open to the public or news media, was organized by Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., The New York Times reported Friday. Paprocki said the main goal of the conference is to help priests and bishops decide when exorcism is appropriate. …

R. Scott Appleby, a professor of church history at the University of Notre Dame, said reviving exorcism restores a sense of the church as an institution dealing with the supernatural: “It’s a strategy for saying: ‘We are not the Federal Reserve, and we are not the World Council of Churches. We deal with angels and demons.'”

That this is being done in the increasingly-religionistic United States cannot be a coincidence. It will inevitably appeal to a nation which tends toward metaphysical solutions to problems.

However, it’s not the only old Catholic practice which the Church is reviving. A couple of years ago, the Pope himself proposed that issuance of indulgences — in the form of paper documents — ought to be resumed, and bishops began following this suggestion, beginning early last year (cached article). Reforms begun early in the 20th century, culminating at the Second Vatican Council, had rendered indulgences-on-paper moot, since Catholicism now holds that, once someone has done something to earn an indulgence*, s/he has earned it; the document itself is unnecessary and superfluous (although there is no reason a Catholic could not still ask for one). This remains the case even now, however, the Church is pushing indulgences-on-paper, as a way of “connecting” Catholics back to the Church … or something.

My guess is that the Catholic Church might ingratiate itself to its laity more efficiently, by confessing its crimes and its sins directly and without excuse or caveat, and by handing over for prosecution all abusive clergy and the hierarchs who aided them. Of course, they will never do that, at least not voluntarily … so they keep looking for other ways to “connect” with the laity.

At any rate, the Church is rolling back the clock, as it were, to an older time when exorcisms were more frequent, in an effort to appear to be actively involved in the supernatural again. And they’re doing it in order to divert attention from the criminality of abusive clergy within its ranks and of the hierarchy that aided and protected them for decades. Nice.

* While the sale of indulgences has been outlawed by the Church since the Council of Trent in the 6th century, their issuance never ended; Catholic doctrine holds that they can still be earned by certain activities, such as devotional prayers, saying of the Rosary, fasting, etc.

Over the past few months I’ve blogged many times on the Roman Catholic clerical child-abuse scandal and that Church’s dismal failure to handle it in anything approaching a mature and morally-upright fashion. But no one should be fooled into thinking scandals of this sort are limited only to Catholicism. Evangelical Protestants such as Ted Haggard and George Alan Rekers have been caught up in sex scandals over the last few years (albeit with adults). And before them, of course, there were Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.

New pictures [cached] have surfaced of Bishop Eddie Long, prominent pastor of a 25,000-member megachurch outside Atlanta, as a third man has come forward accusing the anti-gay advocate of coercing him into sex.

CBS News’ Erica Hill reports the pastor allegedly sent his accusers numerous photos [cached] of himself including at least several of him wearing spandex and workout clothes.

It’s not known precisely how the photos surfaced.

This scandal has been brewing for a week or so, and has reached the point where Long can no longer ignore it, even if — perhaps — he’d first thought he could deflect it:

Long canceled an interview with the Tom Joyner Morning Show Thursday, opting instead to make his first public response to the sex allegations during a service at his Atlanta-area church on Sunday, according to his lawyer, who appeared on the nationally syndicated radio show in Long’s absence.

This article goes into some of the allegations, and also explains Long’s pedigree as a prominent evangelical:

In lawsuits filed this week, three men who were members of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church claimed Long coerced them into sexual relations with gifts including cars, cash and travel when they were 17 or 18 years old. The sprawling church in Lithonia, Ga., about 18 miles outside of Atlanta, counts politicians, celebrities and the county sheriff among its members and hosted four U.S. presidents during the 2006 funeral of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King.

One of the claims in the lawsuits is that Long had sexual contact with the young men, who were enrolled in New Birth’s ministry for teen boys, during trips he took them on in the U.S. and abroad. Gillen said the travel was part of a mentoring program that other young men also participated in.

The problem for Long is not merely that he’s a pastor who knows better than to engage in such behavior, but that he’s an outright hypocrite, since he’s been something of an anti-gay crusader:

Long has called for a national ban on same-sex marriage and his church counsels gay members to become straight. In 2004, he led a march with Bernice King to her father’s Atlanta grave to support a national constitutional amendment to protect marriage “between one man and one woman.”

Bishop Eddie Long spoke out for the first time Friday about allegations that he had sexual relationships with at least three teenage boys in his Atlanta-area church. …

Long said he was in the middle of a battle.

“We will arise through this situation, and go forward, and we are moving forward,” Long said.

That sounds like a guy who’s hired a batallion of attorneys to fight these lawsuits, not someone who’s preparing to give in and go away silently.

It should be no surprise to anyone that, in looking for reactions to this scandal, the mass media ran immediately, microphones extended, to the aforementioned shamed Ted Haggard, who is (likewise no surprise!) supporting his fellow scandal-plagued evangelical pastor, as AOL News reports (cached):

Disgraced pastor Ted Haggard cautions that no one should rush to judge Atlanta megachurch Bishop Eddie Long, who is accused of coercing three young men into sex.

“Nobody’s guilty until the court says he’s guilty,” Haggard, the former head of a 14,000-member congregation in Colorado, told AOL News in a phone interview Wednesday.

I don’t know what’s more pathetic … that the mass media thought that the shamed pastor had anything to say worth hearing, or that Haggard had the audacity to say that no one is permitted to think ill of Long until a court renders a verdict?

CNN has a relatively new religion blog. Maybe you’ve heard of it … but more likely, you haven’t. If not, don’t worry — you aren’t missing much. The kind of pablum this blog conveys is hardly worth your notice, and I mean that regardless of what your own religious viewpoint (if any) is. It’s just not that great.

What’s really amazing, if you pay close attention to these “reports” about the “resurrected Ted’s” incredible success, is that it’s all self-reported. That’s right. We only have Pastor Ted’s word on how great he’s doing and how great he is. There is no “investigation” here, none of the cutting-edge, incisive, insightful and analytical journalism one (presumably) expects of CNN.

Clearly CNN’s new “Belief Blog” is little more than a P.R. engine for Pastor Ted “I’m-not-gay-even-if-I-hired-gay-prostitutes-to-service-me” Haggard. Then again, CNN hooked up with Stephen Prothero, who’s on the record as demanding mandatory Bible classes in public schools.

Yeah. These are the kinds of people CNN is now carrying water for. An unrepentant cretin, and a militant Christian.

As if the Roman Catholic Church didn’t have enough problems, especially with misbehaving clergy, an Italian magazine has exposed priests in that country attending gay clubs and having sex in churches. The (UK) Telegraph reports on this Panorama magazine exposé (WebCite cached article):

A journalist from Panorama, a conservative weekly news magazine owned by Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, used a hidden camera to film interviews with three gay priests, who introduced the journalist to the gay clubs they apparently frequent, and allowed the journalist to film their sexual encounters with strangers, including one in a church building.

One of the priests, a Frenchman identified only as Paul, celebrated Mass in the morning before driving the two escorts he had hired to attend a party the night before to the airport, Panorama said.

The Catholic Church in Italy, still reeling from the paedophile priest scandal, responded on Friday by ordering homosexual priests who are leading a double life to come out of the closet and leave the priesthood.

On the other hand, it denied the men filmed in the magazine exposé were Catholic priests:

The Vatican did not comment on the Panorama investigation, but a senior source said: “This is the usual silly season rubbish to attract readers during the quiet summer months.

In the Connecticut case, it was the archdiocese of Hartford that caught on to the priest’s antics and turned him in to the authorities — likely because they think he had stolen from them. But in Italy, the Church refuses to acknowledge the scandal. They remain delusionally in denial concerning the moral collapse which is rapidly consuming their organization. The facts speak for themselves, even if the Vatican refuses to accept them.

Pope Benedict XVI is creating a new Vatican office to fight secularization and “re-evangelize” the West — a tacit acknowledgment that his attempts to reinvigorate Christianity in Europe haven’t succeeded and need a new boost. …

Benedict said parts of the world are still missionary territory, where the Catholic Church is still relatively unknown. But in other parts of the world like Europe, Christianity has existed for centuries yet “the process of secularization has produced a serious crisis of the sense of the Christian faith and role of the Church.”

The new pontifical council, he said, would “promote a renewed evangelization” in countries where the Church has long existed “but which are living a progressive secularization of society and a sort of ‘eclipse of the sense of God.'”

The Pope and his minions appear to believe that “secularization” has caused Europeans (in particular) to have become unaware of Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church … in spite of the fact that Christianity is nearly two millennia old and for some 15 or 16 centuries was by far the dominant religion of the occidental world. I’m not sure what the folks at the Vatican think happened, to make everyone suddenly and magically “forget” about something so deeply ingrained in western culture … but it seems they think it has.

Could it be — rather — that the occidental world, and Europe in particular, are actually fully aware of Christianity’s existence and its nature, and have made a conscious and rational decision to reject it, based on its far-less-than-stellar history?

As for myself … if the Pope and his religionist minions want me to convert to Catholicism, they’re going to have to make me do so.